Verizon Sees No More Big Spectrum Grabs In Its Future

Verizon today said it doesn't believe it will need to make any more large spectrum acquisitions following the results of the recent AWS-3 spectrum auction. Verizon netted 181 spectrum licenses at a cost of $10.4 billion. The licenses cover 192 million POPs, or about 60% of Americans. Post auction, Verizon now has 40MHz of AWS spectrum covering 95% of the country's major markets, and 60MHz of mid-band spectrum covering about 84% of the population. Verizon may, when the opportunity arises, make small spectrum acquisitions or even lease spectrum, such as Sprint's 2.5GHz airwaves. For now, however, the company will focus on making the most-efficient use possible of its existing spectrum resources. Verizon said carrier aggregation will help a lot, and indicated that small cell deployments will further fill in a lot of gaps. Verizon also said it plans to more aggressively refarm its PCS spectrum, converting it from 3G to LTE 4G. Verizon's winnings ranked third in the AWS-3 auction, behind AT&T's massive $18 billion expenditure and Dish Networks' $13 billion. AT&T and Verizon have been forced to sell some assets in order to keep their balance sheets in order. For example, Verizon recently announced plans to sell some of its landline and fiber business assets to Frontier Communications. It is also selling some of its cell towers.

Verizon says that they won't acquire new spectrum. You know that whenever the 600 auction ever takes place, they'll grab as much as they can, in order to slow down T-Mobile's aggressive expansion. I'm sure for the lower 700 A licenses that they had, that maybe they should have kept them for themselves. I'm still curious who might have the A license that was originally sold to Leap Wireless (Cricket) for the Chicago market, before being bought out by AT&T, & AT&T put that license up for sale.

As for the AWS-3 licenses that all the winners acquired, I wonder if that will be lumped into B4, or given its own band, like the FCC did with the 700 band, where it's divided into different bands, with Verizon being the only one on B13.